The Story of Evil: Volume I - Heroes of the Siege (25 page)

Kari saw only two routes of escape from what she could see with her back to the tall cylinder. She could go back through the alley or sprint down the street that led into the warrior statues plaza. The third option she sarcastically refused, knowing it was a million to one shot.
Or I could shoot the phoenix in the left eye, and he will never be able to find me. Too bad I already used up all my luck hitting his right eye.

Kari considered running into one of the houses, but decided not to take the chance that the phoenix would see her. If there were people in the building she ran into, they would be killed as collateral damage.
If it wasn’t for me those people in that house wouldn’t be burning alive right now,
Kari thought as she covered her ears from the sounds of crackling flames and the screams of people they were being cooked.

The back side of the plaza featured a high brick wall.
There must be some rich person’s house on the other side. They always surround their magnificent houses, lawns, and gardens with high security walls for privacy.
Kari grew frustrated, just like the phoenix who was trying to kill her. Any choice she made would result in her death.

She continued to slowly step counterclockwise, keeping the phoenix on the opposite side of the statue as he searched for her. She took slow, cautious, quiet steps, trying to stay unnoticed. She hoped the monster would abandon his search and fly away. After a couple seconds, she didn’t hear the monster’s steps.

Kari turned her head to look to the right and screamed in terror. The phoenix’s face was looking right at her; it was so close she could have reached out and touched him. The monster had been waiting for her to turn and notice that he had found her, so he could strike fear into her heart. Somehow, he had caught onto this game of hide-and-go seek they were playing.

The phoenix turned its feathery tail into fire and swung it into the warrior’s memorial column. He hit the iron pole in the middle, causing it to snap into three pieces. Kari rolled out of the way as the heavy pieces came toppling down around her.

She sprinted the short distance in the direction she was facing, which happened to be the tall, bricked wall. She ran full speed at it and put her foot on the wall, trying to propel herself up enough that she could grab the top, but she was still four feet short. She jumped again, flat footed from the ground, but was two feet shorter than the last attempt.
Even a Giant would have trouble clearing this wall.

Kari turned to the phoenix and put her back against the wall. The phoenix watched her (with his one eye). A hauntingly evil grin of crooked, razor sharp teeth spread across his face. He had won.

Kari drew her bow and reached for one of the seven arrows in her quiver, but stopped. Even if she multiplied her seven arrows times seventy, she would not have enough. There was an ancient legend told of a warrior who had battled a great phoenix with his bow and arrows. On the five-hundredth shot, the phoenix finally died. Kari didn’t know if the story was true, but she knew nothing less than five hundred arrows would fall a great flying monster. The immense beasts were some of the strongest of the evil god’s creations. Just to take one down, the warriors would need an equal amount of power to attack with.

Usually warriors used their flying monsters who had converted to serve the good god. If none of the friendly monsters were available, the warriors used all the powers they could summon: horses, catapults, and hundreds of armed men. Sometimes all that was not even enough for them to leave the battlefield with their lives.

Kari realized there was nowhere she could go and nothing she could do, except to wait until the phoenix decided to kill her. The huge colorfully feathered monster flew up into the air, above the broken remnants of the statue. Now there was enough distance for him to use all of his stamina and energy to send his most powerful attack of fire to consume her. The phoenix was overcompensating of course. He could have simply killed her with one swing of his clawed hand or one chomp with his jaws. But this woman had hurt him. He would forever be blind in one eye.

Dragons, gryphons, and phoenixes lived for hundreds of years. This phoenix was fairly young, he had not even lived a full century. And now, for the remainder of his long life, he would be handicapped by this woman’s incredibly lucky shot.

The woman had blinded him, annoyingly evaded him, and made him look like a fool when he crashed through the bell tower of the church. But he had her now, trapped. The phoenix saw her knees buckling in fear, but noticed she wasn’t crying or curling up into a ball on the ground, hugging herself. For a woman, she had a strength he hadn’t seen in most warrior men who he had cornered and killed. But he didn’t care about her bravery. He was going to scorch in an inferno and char her to a crisp. This time, she would not escape.

Kari stood and awaited her imminent death. She was scared, but she tried not to show it in her final moments. She had lost all of her belongings today, her whole life. It was only fitting that she burn from the same flames.

The half-Human, half-Elf reached down and pulled out her locket. In one hand, she held her mother’s memento and in the other, her father’s bow. Kari looked up at the monster that was about to kill her. The phoenix opened his mouth and drew in a deep breath. The glow of a red and orange fireball glowed in its throat.

Kari closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again she would be staring into the faces of her mother and father.

Chapter 21

The pain she expected from being engulfed in an inferno of fire never came.

Kari opened her eyes and looked up just in time to see a lifeless green feathered gryphon come barreling down from the sky and crash hard into the body of the phoenix. The phoenix’s head violently twisted as he was hit in the shoulder and wing from the unexpected falling object. The pyro attack meant to disintegrate Kari shot from the phoenix’s mouth and up into the air. The impact drove the phoenix hard into the dirt floor of the plaza.

Kari covered her eyes to shield herself from the dust that was kicked up. When it settled, she saw the two flying monsters twisted together in a contorted pile of dirt and rubble. They were combined into one feathery ball of red, orange, gray, and green.

The gryphon’s wing started lifting up from something moving underneath it. A bloodied, armored man was crawling out of the wreckage, grimacing in pain. He dragged himself from underneath the dead body of his gryphon, coughing terribly. Kari ran to the injured warrior.

The closer she got to the gryphon and phoenix, the more she realized how small she was compared to them. She had already seen the phoenix up close, but this was the first time she had seen a gryphon in her life, albeit a dead one. Kari knelt down next to the injured warrior of Elven descent. He didn’t say anything as he sat up and looked around half stunned and half amazed.

“Where are you hurt?” she asked, looking over his body from top to bottom. Other than a plethora of scraps and cuts, it looked like nothing was broken. Some of the blood was his, from the crash-landing. The warrior had been thrown from the saddle of his gryphon and violently slammed into the hard ground. As far as the rest of the blood, she could not say where it came from. The gryphon? The phoenix? The monster? She was not sure.

The warrior checked himself over as she had just done, before saying, “I it my ung.”

“What?” Kari said. Whatever he had said was incomprehensible to her, but then she saw the red in between his teeth and understood.

“I bit my tongue.” He said more slowly and precisely, turning to his side and spitting out a mouthful of blood.

“Anywhere else hurt?” she asked.

The warrior thought for a moment then shook his head no and asked, “Ere em I?” as he began to look around. Before Kari had to ask for repetition of the question, he asked again, knowing he needed to focus on his words. “Where am I?”

Before she could answer, the warrior with blonde hair tied back behind his head was dragging himself away from her. His eyes were fixated on something on the other side of the plaza. He was using his arms to scoot himself across the ground on his butt.

The warrior started laughing quietly to himself, interrupted by bouts of coughing and spitting out blood. Kari figured he was crazy. He had slammed into the ground pretty hard.
He must have smashed his head, scrambling his brains. Either that or the Darien Sea is made of ale, and he just drank it in its entirety.

The faster he scooted, the more he was coughing, but the louder he was laughing. Kari looked around the plaza, drawing and aiming her bow thinking his laughing would bring down the army of monsters on them. She looked back to the warrior who was holding up the head of the statue, which had broken off from the body when it was knocked down by the phoenix. He was playfully tossing it in the air back and forth between his hands. Kari couldn’t hear what he was mumbling to the statue, but he kept smiling and laughing. She walked over to him, not knowing how to help the demented man.

He held the statue next to his head, both of the faces pointing at her. His speech was starting to become more understandable. “My grandfather,” he said, laughing. “Of all the places to fall…” He took a moment to spit out more blood. ”I land in the plaza of my grandfather’s statue of honor.”

Kari couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between the face made of iron and the face of the warrior as he held it up next to his head.
Maybe he isn’t crazy after all.

“This is unbelievable,” the Elf said. “It must be a sign…that my life will not end as early as his did.”

Kari nodded, not knowing what she was agreeing to. “We have to get out of the open. Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked. She didn’t know what to do if he was immobile. She would not leave him here to be killed by monsters.

“I’m fine, just a little dizzy right now. My head is spinning.” The warrior started to stand up, but immediately went as pale as a ghost and began slumping back down. Kari caught him under his armpit and helped him to stand, supporting his weight as he leaned on her.

The warrior took a good look at Kari and realized how beautiful she was; her face, her body, her smile. Those were always the first things he saw in girls his own age. But with her, he also noticed her confident walk and her caring tone of voice when she spoke to him. He had seen many beautiful women in his life, but this half-Elf stood out like no other.

“Usually I’m the one to rescue the pretty damsel in distress, not the other way around.”

“You did rescue me. Although whether it was intentional or not, I’m not sure.” She smiled, hoping the simple expression would relieve some of his pain.

“I’m just glad we both survived. I actually thought I did die, and you were the beautiful angel to greet me into heaven,” the warrior said as the woman put on the necklace she was holding and dropped the attached locket down in the crevice of her chest.

“Me the angel? You were the one who came down from the skies to save me. If anyone is the angel here, it’s you,” she laughed.

The warrior loved her laugh as much as every other part of her. He took her response as a sign that she was somewhat interested in him. “A quick wit and attractive, topped off by a woman carrying a bow and quiver? You’re my kind of lady: deadly attractive, but equally dangerous… depending on how good your aim is.” The warrior had learned that complimenting a girl but also questioning her skill made her want to prove herself to him and seek out his approval. He was very skilled in the underlying technique of manipulating the thoughts and emotions of girls. Other than using his double swords and cracking funny jokes, it was the one thing he knew he was good at.

The answer she gave him was not what he was expecting. “My accuracy is excellent, warrior. You can be sure of that. It’s a lot better than your weak flirting method. Do you go around telling all the girls they are pretty and funny angels?”

The Elf ignored the question and clutched at his heart in mock pain from this lady not accepting his advances.
It’s not often I get shut down so quickly. She is different.
“There used to be a day when falling from the sky and saving a helpless woman’s life automatically won you her heart,” he said.

Kari let go of him, and the warrior was able to balance himself on his own. The dizziness of the spiraling fall and hard crash were fading away, but the pain in his mouth still throbbed. Kari could see it was bothering the warrior.

“Let me see inside your mouth. I can tell you how bad it is,” she offered.

“You’re a hard one to read. You didn’t seem like the type of person that would want to progress a relationship so rapidly.” The warrior said as he opened his mouth.

Kari could see the injury, but she said, “Wider,” happily causing the warrior a little extra pain as a punishment for slightly insulting her. She stood on the tips of her toes to look in his mouth as she held his jaw. He was only a little bit taller than her at five and three quarter’s feet.

“The cut is not bad, but it’s not good either. You bit it pretty hard. The bleeding looks like it is starting to slow down though.” Kari let go of his jaw. “At least you didn’t bite it completely off. So you will be able to work on your pick up lines and maybe redeem yourself for the awful one you used on me.”